I often say that I celebrate EVERY holiday I can. Today, that’s National Voter Registration Day! Today, organizations across the country are running massive voter registration drives to try to sign up every legally eligible American citizen to vote in the coming midterms.

If you know that you aren’t registered, you can go to the website of VOTE.ORG and sign up at: https://www.vote.org/register-to-vote/ . On that page, they also have links for special circumstances, such as registering from overseas or rural or homeless people with no address. But for most of us, clicking that link will get you registered in about 2 minutes.

But I’m assuming most readers of this blog are like me. I registered decades ago and have always updated my voter information when I’ve moved. So normally, I wouldn’t worry about my voter registration.

Unfortunately, these are not normal times.

There is a certain group of people in this country whose policies have become increasingly unpopular. So their approach to winning the midterm elections is not putting forth compelling arguments about their political opinions. Rather, they are trying to keep people from voting, assuming most of the people they are disenfranchising would otherwise vote against them. Of course, they are also trying to keep us from knowing that they are trying to restrict voting by purging registered voters from the voting rolls.

So let’s ALL celebrate National Voters Registration Day by making a few minutes to check our current voter registration status on our state election board website. In North Carolina, that link is: vt.ncsbe.gov/reglkup . You just fill out a short form, and if the response you get shows the word ACTIVE by your name, YAY! That means that you’re registered and can vote with no issues.

However….

If your status shows “inactive,” it means there is some issue but you haven’t been dropped from the voter rolls. You should still be able to vote, but may have to fill out a provisional ballot or update your address. But who wants that hassle while voting? Get in touch with your county board of elections to see how you can get the problem ironed out before you actually vote.

If your name doesn’t come up at all, either there is a problem with your name matching OR you aren’t currently registered. Once again, contact your county board of elections to clear up any problems.

Many of these “what happened to my registration?” issues stem from a Republican lawsuit from 2024. Prior to 2023, NC voter registration forms let people skip their driver’s license number or the last 4 digits of their Social Security Number. NC Republicans sued to remove approximately 225,000–250,000 voters flagged for not including that information from the voter rolls. Election officials began requiring these people to update their information or be removed from the voter rolls. The election boards sent letters to those voters who had been flagged, and many updated their data immediately. However, an estimated 73,000 people have not yet done so (at least that was the number at the end of 2025).

You don’t want to be one of those 73,000 people. So please take a moment to go check. Encourage your friends and family to do so as well.

But you’ve got to stay alert. Here in North Carolina, the North Carolina legislature passed House Bill 958, which is their version of Trump’s beloved SAVE Act (without a single Democratic vote for the bill). It requires election officials to cross-check voter rolls against federal/state databases (including the federal SAVE system) to flag voters who may be dead, noncitizens, or otherwise ineligible. It then allows the State Board of Elections to remove flagged names, but WITHOUT informing voters that they are being dropped (as they did with the 2024 case I described above). Of course, the Democratic legislators insisted on notifying such voters, but the Republicans voted them down.

Now of course, I (a registered Independent) and I’m sure the Democratic legislators agree that we should remove dead, noncitizen, or ineligible voters from our rolls. The problem is that the federal and state databases are notoriously outdated and inaccurate. Of course, the voters most likely to be affected by these policies are people who have changed their names, such as married and/or divorced women or people who have changed their gender. I don’t care what party you are–if you are going to cancel people’s voting rights based on outdated information without even informing them you are doing so, let alone establishing a process where they can challenge or explain any discrepancies, is just WRONG. You don’t take away people’s voting rights based merely on computer database information without telling them and giving them a chance to prove their eligibility to vote.

The saving grace here in North Carolina is that we have a Democratic governor, Josh Stein, who vetoed the legislation. THANK YOU GOVERNOR STEIN! The Republicans don’t appear to have the, literally, 1 more vote they need to override his veto. And the legislature is out of session now and is not supposed to come back again until after the elections.

In case you’re thinking, OK, it’s settled, so why bother writing all this? You’re beating a dead horse. But I think we’ve learned with President Trump (who is coming to North Carolina this Wednesday in support of his hand-picked Senate candidate)…there’s no such thing as a dead horse. The more desperate he and the Republicans get about the elections, the more pressure they will put on any avenue they can find to get the results they want. So it’s always possible they may find that 1 last vote and come back for an emergency session to override the veto. So it’s good to know this background and to understand what this legislation will do if we need to oppose it on an emergency basis.

But for today, all I ask is that you double check your registration and be happy when you see that ACTIVE by your name.

Actually, I would like to ask for one more thing. I would like us all to spend a minute in silence giving gratitude to the Supreme Court, who finally blocked President Trump’s plans to install a new system for the US Postal System to collect and deliver mail-in ballots. North Carolina is one of the states that has already started mailing out mail-in ballots, so to me changing our mail-in voting system at this point is UNTHINKABLE. But as I said earlier, these are not normal times.

In fact, Judges Thomas and Alito disagreed with the majority decision. Judge Kavanaugh voted with the majority, but commented that he wasn’t necessarily disagreeing with the President’s proposal; he just thought it was too close to the election for the states to be able to implement.

I’m always saying that when people I tend to disagree with do something I agree with, I want to acknowledge that and say Thank You. So thank you to the Supreme Court for not making this coming election crazier than it already is.

Enjoy your National Voter Registration Day!